This article really hit home! I just recently had a few good friend pass very close together. At the viewing & dinner were many pictures & many stories to go with them. I never wanted my picture taken & actually threw many away. After this last year I realized maybe I didn't want my picture, but maybe my kids did! SO, I decided to stop hiding from pics and enjoy my family & hopefully when I pass they can look back & relive some joyful times with their Mom!
Also, I recently came across a picture of my Greatgrandparents on the front porch of the family home, with my grandparents, who grandmother was pregnant with my daddie...really neat, glad they took that pic. & I get to see it!

A few months ago my son put all my pictures on my computer. As we were sorting them into categories and decades he noticed there were very few of me. And most of them were taken 30 plus years ago when he was still a little kid. The pile of just Mom dressed nice and posed consisted of 2 pictures-ages 13 and 33. Not much of a pictoral legacy. He found a few more when he visited the the rest of the familys albums. So now my DIL takes pictures of us all the time and she is quite sneaky about getting shots of me. When I protest she lays the guilt trip on me '''Your Grand daughters will want them''' so I shut up and try to not notice the camera. Althou I have noticed I comb my hair a lot more than I use to : )

One Christmas, My parents surprised us kids with a professional photo of them. Neither one smiled in the photo but they also did not like to be in pictures. Daddy died within a couple of years f that photo.....he died in 1996. I cherished that picture when I recieved it....i still chersh that picture..the wallet size is in my wallet. Still brings a smile to my heart. Mom died in 2009. We cant capture a moment that has long passed. Now, go stand in FRONT of that camera!!

Please become a part of the pictures taken. My Mom always had a child in front of her face, or turned her head, slid behind someone...and there are very few pictures of her beautiful smile, red wavy hair and "rubenesque" figure (a tribute to the buxom beauties in our family) to show her grandchildren.